Fatal Heat: A Navy SEAL Novella (2 page)

Mel had a fully-equipped gym in the garage, but even if it weren’t there, Max would have improvised one. Plastic bags or empty milk bottles filled with sand, fingertip pull-ups from the door frame, a two-by-four as an ab bench—he’d done it all as a kid.

Time to sweat out the nightmare. When he walked into the gym with its gleaming equipment, the sky outside the window was slate gray. An hour later, wiping the sweat from his chest, it was pearl gray.

The ocean was forty feet away. Back in the day, forty feet was laughable, nothing. He could run it in a few seconds. He ran ten miles a day in boots, every day, and did a hundred push-ups at the end of the run. He didn’t do it laughing, but he did it.

No running now. Maybe not ever. His doctors had originally said he’d never walk again and now look at him. Of course he didn’t walk so much as lurch. Each step took a second and sent a wire of pain straight into his head.

But in the water… ah, in the water he was still a god. An injured god, slower than any of his Team mates, but still faster than most civilians.

Time to swim. He looked forward to his long daily swims where his mangled leg was merely a deadweight. Slipping into the water was a delight. He headed out into the still-dark ocean with strong, sure strokes, using his arms more than his legs, the sun sliding up into the sky at his back.

If he’d had the ocean a few steps away a year ago when he’d woken up from surgery, as soon as he could walk he’d have been tempted to swim as far as his strength could carry him—so far he could never make it back—and die a swimmer’s death.

Better than the death that was staring him in the face: pissing into a bag, needing help to sip soup. If he’d had the means and the strength to end it those first few months, he would have. But they’d watched over him and nothing sharp was ever within reach.

And so he determined that he’d walk again and, by God, inch by trembling inch he’d done it. The physical therapist threatened to tie him down because he did too much, but he knew his own body. His body wanted to stand upright, wanted the challenge. Going slow was not an option.

He swam for an hour until his strength began to fail. He’d gone less than a mile. He hated that. During BUD/S he’d swim five miles, come out of the surf running, hit the grinder to pound out a hundred push-ups. Now he was exhausted as he trod water.

There was a small island three miles out. Some kind of research facility, his XO had told him. Santo Domingo Island. Goddamn it, he was going tcal was goo get to the point where he could swim there and back, no matter what it took.

The swim back was slow, his muscles not pulling him smoothly and strongly through the water as they were supposed to. He started trembling.

Fuck this. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t even supposed to be upright. That the doctors had told him he might never walk again. He was a fucking SEAL. And SEALs didn’t do weakness.

He dove under, swimming the last fifty yards under water, knowing he couldn’t possibly do a hundred push-ups at the end.

Max strained toward shore, fighting the urge to breathe, at the very limit of his strength, when he suddenly heard his name called. A female voice, calling his name.

What the fuck? A mermaid? Some kind of underwater creature calling him down to his death?

He reared up from the water.

And something strong and hairy, moving fast, cannonballed into him, taking him back under before he had a chance to fill his lungs with air.

O
h no!

Paige Waring stepped back in dismay. A man had suddenly appeared out of the water, rising up like some mythic sea god. Max jumped him and he tumbled back under.

Her gorgeous, smart, totally undisciplined dog Max, who growled at some men and became instant best friends with others.

The man he’d jumped was so frightening-looking she couldn’t understand Max’s friendliness.

He looked like he’d eat you for breakfast and spit out the bones. And he was her new neighbor.

She’d known only that her new neighbor was a former naval officer recovering from wounds sustained in combat. Though Uncle Mel hadn’t said it, she supposed her new neighbor was a SEAL, because that’s what Uncle Mel was.

The man crested the surface, Max jumping and yapping happily around him.

He didn’t look frightening—he looked terrifying. Last night she’d had the impression in the darkness of danger on a hair trigger.

A wounded officer next door. She was hardwired to try to do something for him. After all, he’d been wounded in the service of his country. So she’d baked cookies, meaning to go over and invite him to a glass of wine and cookies as a neighborly gesture.

Then she’d seen him, a huge figure in the semi-darkness, face grim and frightening. One leg extended, thinner than the other one, which was thick with muscle. The damaged leg had looked so mangled and scarred, it hurt to look at it.

He’d turned to her, and even in the gloom his face was frightening, speaking of the terrible things he’d seen. The terrible things that had been done to him.

She’d murmured a few words, left the cookies on the balcony between them, and retreated to her apartment because the guy sitting out there in the dark didn’t look like a nice neighbor. He looked like a killer.

Now he rose back up from the waves, water streaming off him. And up and up. He was tall and huge. Or had been huge. He was on the thin side, but he had the bones of a big man: broad-shouldered, long-legged, with enormous hands.

Crisscrossed with scars. Terrible scars. Life-threatening scars. On top of that mangled leg.

Paige stood and stared. He seemed like a creature from the mists of time, a ravaged warrior misplaced on their tame stretch of beach.

Max jumped him again and Paige broke out of the spell she’d been under. She had to save her dog. This man could hurt Max badly with one swipe of one of those enormous hands.

“Down, Max, down!” she cried, rushing forward into the surf, heart pounding. She was ready to face the man down to defend her dog, but heavens, he looked terrifying.

Max leaped again and she saw the man’s weight shift to that mangled leg, and he faltered.

“Max!” Paige clapped her hands because a dog instructor—one of the many to whom she’d taken her loveable but absolutely incorrigible dog—had told her it was a signal for dogs to calm down.

Not Max—he was rollicking in the waves, jumping on the man.

The man made a gesture with his big hand, and to her astonishment, Max settled a little, dropping his front paws back into the sea.

The skin on his back rippled and Paige’s eyes widened.

“No!” she shouted.

But it was too late. Max shook all over, drenching her and the man. He was wet all over anyway, but she’d have to shower again before heading to work.

Oh God. Max had knocked this man down and showered him with doggy-smelling seawater. Who knew how he would react?

And then the man looked at her and grinned. It was a mere flash, a movement of the edges of his mouth, a glimpse of white teeth, and then his face settled back into its usual grim lines.

“Cookie Lady,” he said. “The cookies were great.”

His voice was unusually deep and dark, completely out of place on this bright sunny morning. She shivered.

“Yes. Cookie Lady.” She looked at him—at the height of him, the breadth of him, that face that was now totally unsmiling. It had to be done. She was in the wrong. Her dog had made a man with a crippled leg tumble into the ocean.

So she did the brave thing and offered her hand. Hoping he wouldn’t notice that it trembled. Hoping he’d give it back unharmed.

Paige disliked shaking hands with macho men. She needed her hands to do delicate lab work. Often guys felt they had to prove their manhood with their grip. This one looked like he could crush her hand with no effort at all.

But… her dog
had
jumped him. And Uncle Mel was his commanding officer.

“I’m really, really sorry. I’d like to say that I don’t know what got into my dog, but he’s always like this. I seem to spend all my time apologizing for him. I’m Paige. Paige Waring.”

His hand enveloped hers in a strong, gentle grip. His hand felt like warm steel. He might be wounded, but his grip was like touching a live wire, crackling with electricity. She was so surprised, she kept her hand in his as if the electricity had created some kind of chemical bond.

“Max.”

At hearing his name, Max gave a happy bark and jumped both of them. Paige lost her footing in the surf and would have fallen if he hadn’t immediately snaked a big arm around her, pulling her upright and against him in an unshakeable grasp.

His leg might be mangled and he might be overly thin, but there was no mistaking the strength in the muscles she found herself plastered against.

It was intensely embarrassing and—whoa—incredibly exciting. The only other man who looked this strong was Uncle Mel, but she’d never been in a full frontal embrace with him.

She’d never felt a man this strong before.

Her father, bless his soul, had been thin and stoop-shouldered, and was undoubtedly right this minute leafing through ancient history texts in heaven. And the men she dated were mainly fellow scientists. Nice guys, but nerds mostly.

Nothing like this. Nothing at all.

Even though he’d been in the chilly Pacific, he radiated heat and a very male kind of electricity she’d never encountered before but recognized instantly, as if a hundred years of female empowerment and her PhD had been suddenly stripped away, leaving a breathless female reacting to an alpha male.

He was reacting, too, the merest hint of a stirring against her belly when Max barked and jumped them again.

Paige moved away, lifting Max’s paws off them. “Down, boy,” she chided. “
Down.”
Looking up, she caught a fleeting expression cross his face, his eyes flaring. It was over so quickly she wondered whether she’d imagined the whole thing. But in the meantime, her pulse quickened and her mouth went dry.

This was ridiculous and very unlike her.

He was a neighbor—a wounded soldier, formerly under the command of her godfather—and he’d been jumped by her dog. He deserved better than a hormone-stricken woman rendered breathless by beefcake.

She straightened, tilting her head back to look him straight in the eyes. Dark brown, very intense eyes. And highly intelligent ones, too. That shook her for a moment. She was totally unused to male intelligence as a sxmlgence aubset of muscle.

Mostly, in her experience, male intelligence was linked to white lab coats. Definitely not huge expanses of tough, naked, tanned skin.

“I’m really sorry, Lieutenant—”

“Max,” he said, and her dog woofed.

Why was he—oh! “Your name is Max, too?”

“Like your dog.” He dipped his head, her hand still in his. “Maxwell Wright. Max for short.”

“He’s Maximilian. Max for short.”

She tugged and he let go of her hand. It felt like she’d been unplugged from some arcane power source. “Lieutenant Wright.” That had been the name Uncle Mel had said.

Another expression crossed his face. Not of heat and amusement, but of grief. Deep, painful grief. She’d just lost her father. She understood grief, understood it in her bones.

“Not lieutenant,” he said. “Not anymore.”

Involuntarily, Paige looked down at his leg. With that leg—much thinner than the other one, crisscrossed with scars—he wouldn’t be an acting naval officer, no. One leg was brown and powerful, thickly muscled—the other pale, the muscles withered.

And all those other scars. Surgical scars, mostly, white lines with tiny tucks on each side, crisscrossing his chest. One round puckered scar in his shoulder, which even she could see was a gunshot wound, looked to be older than the others.

Her dog looked from one to the other while they were talking, brown eyes trained on his mistress and on his new best friend. He obviously decided all this talking was boring, and he hunched his shoulders, which is what he did before leaping.

Paige gasped. The other Max, the human one, was going to get jumped again, knocked down again. “Max, no! Bad boy!”

It was perfectly pointless because Max never obeyed. She stooped to grab ahold of his collar when human Max made another slight gesture with one big hand, and her Max relaxed.

Amazing.

Then she looked up again at the big man and realized just why Max had rethought his Jumping on Everyone is Fun philosophy. The man had “command” written all over him, just as Uncle Mel had. It was unthinkable that anyone, man or beast, would not obey him instantly.

It must be a great trait to have, one she sadly lacked.

Her Max whined, looking back and forth between them.

Human Max scratched Max’s head, never averting his gaze from hers. It was unnerving, being watched so closely, particularly by a man who managed to project such a forceful personality even standing barefoot in the surf dressed only in swim trunks.

Maybe it was all those muscles.